Description
Book SynopsisThis exciting reinterpretation of the path to Revolution follows Virginia planters' attempts to break with England and shows how their grassroots effort at self-sufficiency solidified into political resistance, war, and independence.
Trade ReviewRagsdale provides the first well detailed synthesis of the development of economic dependence on Great Britain in a colony/state of the Upper South. . . . His interpretations are fresh and interesting. Among Ragsdale's major contributions is the explicit connection he makes between economic, political, and social ideas and practices, and his linkage of the process of transformation with race-based chattel slavery. -- Sylvia R. Frey, Tulane University
A Planters' Republic persuasively demonstrates that Washington, Jefferson, Madison and fellow Virginians concieved of liberty in both economic and political terms. This important, gracefully written account of Virginians' uneasy commercial relationship with the mother country enlarges our understanding of the coming of the Revolution in Great Britain's most valued mainland colony. Ragsdale also deftly shows how Virginians' efforts to shape an independent, prosperous state economy after 1776 led ultimately to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. -- Jean B. Lee, University of Wisconsin
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 The Political Economy of a Tobacco Colony Chapter 3 An Imperial Crisis and the Origins of Commercial Resistance Chapter 4 Nonimportation and the Chesapeake Economy Chapter 5 "A Source of Ignorance and Vice": The Slave Trade and Economic Development in Virginia Chapter 6 Commercial Development and the Credit Crisis of 1772 Chapter 7 The Renewal of Commercial Resistance Chapter 8 Virginia and the Continental Association Chapter 9 Commercial Development in an Independent Virginia Chapter 10 Conclusion Chapter 11 Index
